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THE    ABORIGINES   AND    THE    COLONISTS.* 


BY    EDWARD    EGGLESTON. 


FIRST    ACQUAINTANCE. 

"  Tall,  handsome  timbered  people,"  is  the 
phrase  by  which  one  of  the  eariiest  travelers  in 
New  England  describes  the  Indians,  and  he 
adds  that  "  the  Indesses  that  are  young  are 
some  of  them  very  comely  —  many  pretty 
brownettos  and  spider-fingered  lasses  may 
be  seen  among  them."  He  frankly  adds 
that  the  savages  are  "  very  fingurative  or 
thievish,''  and  "  importunate  beggars  "  withal. 
Mutur.i  curiosity,  followed  by  barter,  by 
attempts  at  religious  conversion,  and  by  a 
hostility  from  which  there  seemed  to  be  no 
escape,  are  the  ever-recurring  phases  of  the 
contact  of  the  white  and  red  races  in  all  parts 
of  North  America.  With  fresh  and  wondering 
eyes  the  explorers  sent  by  Ralegh  saw  the 
stately  Indians  who  came  to  trade  on  the 
decks  of  their  vessels,  and  the  later  comers 
in  James  River  looked  with  a  similar  curiosity 
at  the  chief  who  marched  to  welcome  them 
at  the  head  of  a  procession,  while  he  played 
upon  a  scrannel  pipe  of  reed.  It  is  hard  for 
us  to  imagine  the  wonder  with  which  these 
untraveled  Englishmen  regarded  savages  who 
wore  their  hair  cut  short  like  a  cock's  comb 
in  the  middle  of  the  head,  one  side  of  which 
was  shaved  and  covered  by  a  copper  plate ; 
who  decked  their  painted  iDodies  with  birds' 
feathers ;  and  wore,  besides  other  "  conun- 
drums," such  ear-ring  pendants  as  bears'  or 
hawks'  claws,  living  snakes,  or  "  dead  rats  by 
the  tail";  sometimes,  also,  the  dried  hand  of  a 
human  enemy  dangled  under  a  face  painted 
to  produce  a  horrible  effect. 

The  Indians,  on  their  part,  held  supersti- 
tious notions  of  the  new-comers,  whom  they 
regarded  as  in  some  sort  matjitos,  or  demons, 
on  account  of  their  apparently  magical  skill. 
When  the  black  slaves  were  brought,  how- 
ever, the  savages  at  Manhattan  revised  their 
theory  ;  these  blacks  were  "  the  true  breed  of 
devils,"  they  exclaimed.  The  mysterious  arti- 
cles of  the  white  man's  manufacture  were  all 
supernatural  in  Indian  eyes.  Thomas  Harriott, 
the  great  mathematician,  a  member  of  Ra- 
legh's colony,  zealously  read  the  Bible  in  the 
hamlets  of  the  North   Carolina  tribes,  who 


thereupon  paid  homage  to  the  book.  Har- 
riott's scientific  instruments,  the  loadstones, 
burning-glasses,  fireworks,  guns,  fish-hooks, 
and,  yet  more,  a  spring  clock  that  "  went  of 
itself,"  were  also  considered  supernatural. 
On  the  hill  by  New  Amsterdam,  the  Indians 
watched  the  ghostly  wings  of  the  windmill, 
moved  by  a  power  invisible,  and  to  them  it 
was  "  the  world's  wonder ;  they  durst  not  come 
near  his  long  arms  and  teeth  biting  to  pieces." 

But  all  the  childish  curiosity  and  all  the 
erroneous  notions  were  not  on  the  side  of 
the  savages.  The  early  travelers  and  settlers 
believed  with  singular  unanimity  that  Indians 
were  bom  white ;  even  the  French  Jesuit 
writers  who  dwelt  among  them  would  have  it 
that  the  color  of  their  skins  was  due  to  their 
nudity  and  to  bear's-grease,  while  Josselyn 
states  explicitly  that  the  Indian  babes  in  New 
England  were  dyed  with  hemlock  bark,  tanned 
like  leather,  as  one  might  say;  and  so  late  as 
1 68 1,  William  Penn  pronounces  them  black 
as  gypsies,  "  but  by  design." 

The  institutions  of  the  Indians  are  seen 
through  English  eyes  by  all  the  colonists. 
Petty  chiefs  of  a  few  hundred  or,  at  most, 
two  or  three  thousand  bowmen,  are  "  kings," 
and  we  read  of  a  message  sent  from  Pennsyl- 
vania to  the  "  Emperor  of  Canada  "  —  some 
Iroquois  head  man,,  no  doubt.  The  chief's 
squaw  was  always  a  "  queen  "  or  an  "  em- 
press," and  the  little  naked  Pocahontas  was  a 
royal  "  princess."  We  grow  tired  of  thinking 
how  great  a  mob  of  kings  and  emperors  there 
were  in  this  savage  wilderness,  and  are 
relieved  when  a  more  modest  writer  speaks 
of  "  one  Black  William,  an  Indian  duke."  In 
like  manner,  the  "medicine-men,"  or  profes- 
sional conjurors  and  jugglers,  were  regarded 
by  the  earlier  voyagers  as  the  priests  of  a 
regular  worship  of  the  sun  or  of  the  devil. 

A  favorite  topic  for  the  display  of 
learned  folly  in  Europe  and  America  in  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  was  the 
origin  of  the  Indians.  At  a  very  early  period 
they  were  the  cursed  children  of  Canaan,  the 
son  of  Ham;  then  it  was  shrewdly  guessed 
that  they  came  from  Joktan,  and  their  affiU- 
ation  might  quite  as  reasonably  have  been 
fixed  upon  almost  any  of  the  other  names  in 
the  biblical  genealogies.  However,  the  eminent 


*  Copyright,  1883,  by  Edward  Eggleston.     All  rights  reserved. 


u^^ 


V3. 


THE  ABORIGINES  AND    THE    COLONISTS. 


97 


Dutch  scholar,  Grotius — "the  Oracle  of  Delft" 
—  discovered  that  the  Americans  could  not  be, 
as  various  writers  had  maintained,  Scythians, 
Moors,  Tartars,  or  what  not,  but  must  be  of 
Hebrew  descent.  This  hypothesis,  founded 
on  the  similarity  of  customs  among  primitive 
peoples,  served  to  quicken  the  hopes  of  the 
apostle  Eliot,  and  to  stimulate  the  liberality 
of  sentimental  people  in  England,  who  were 
pleased  to  find  Americans  in  their  Bibles,  if 
only  by  far-fetched  inference.  And  did  not 
the  Indians,  like  the  ancient  Jews,  anoint 
their  heads,  dance  after  a  victory,  compute 
time  by  nights  and  moons,  speak  in  parables, 
and  make  "grievous  mournings  and  yellings" 
for  their  dead  ?  But  there  were  rival  theories 
in  vogue,  some  of  them  mixed  up  with  an  in- 
comprehensible jargon  about  Gog  and  Magog. 
Dr.  Mede,  a  famous  English  theologian,  pro- 
pounded one  which  was  regarded  by  some  in 
New  England  "  as  the  oracle  of  God."  It  was 
that  some  centuries  after  Christ,  the  devil, 
becoming  alarmed  lest  his  worship  should  be 
quite  expelled  from  the  world,  induced  some  of 
the  heathen  of  the  north  of  Europe  to  under- 
take a  passage  to  a  promised  land  in  America, 
thus  making  himself  "  the  ape  of  God,"  who 
had  led  his  chosen  people  in  this  way. 
The  conclusion  was  that,  although  it  might 
be  found  impossible  to  convert  the  devil-wor- 
shipers, yet  it  would  be  a  work  "  pleasing 
to  Almighty  God  and  our  Blessed  Saviour  to 
affront  the  devil  with  the  sound  of  the  Gos- 
pel where  he  had  hoped  to  escape  the  din 
thereof." 

This  theory  of  Dr.  Mede  was  suitable  to 
the  state  of  feeling  in  New  England  in  the 
time  of  Philip's  war,  and  accorded  with  the 
belief,  prevailing  so  persistently,  that  the 
American  Indians  worshiped  devils,  and  held 
audible  and  visible  communication  with 
Satan  through  their  diviners  or  medicine-men. 
Champlain  declares  that  the  priests  of  the 
Algonkins  talk  visibly  with  the  devil;  and 
Whittaker,  the  "  Apostle  of  Virginia,"  says 
that  the  Indians  are  "  naked  slaves  of  the 
devil,"  and  that  their  priests  are  no  better  than 
English  witches.  Strachey,  secretary  of  the 
Virginia  colony,  thinks  that  their  "  connivres  " 
are  able  to  detect  theft  by  the  devil's  help; 
and  Lawson  had  heard  that,  while  the  con- 
jurations of  Carolina  Indians  were  in  progress, 
there  was  a  significant  "  smell  of  brimstone  in 
the  cabins."  The  pilgrims  at  Plymouth  rec- 
ognized the  power  of  Indian  jugglers  to  fetch 
rain ;  the  Jesuits  of  Canada  equally  believed 
in  their  magical  skill;  and  a  Dutch  clergy- 
man at  Fort  Orange  avers  that  they  had  so 
much  witchcraft,  divination,  sorcery,  and 
wicked  tricks,  that  they  could  not  be  held  in 
by  any  bands  or   locks.  Josselyn  says   that 


the  medicine-men  of  New  England  were  invul- 
nerable—  "shot  free  and  stick  free";  while 
one  of  the  earliest  fur-traders  of  Maine  de- 
clares that  the  Indians  were  all  witches.  Roger 
Williams  lovingly  calls  the  savages  "  wild 
brethren  and  sisters,"  but,  after  having  once 
seen  a  medicine-dance,  he  "  durst  never  be  an 
eye-witness,  spectator,  or  looker-on,"  lest  he 
should  have  been  "  partaker  of  Sathan's  inven- 
tions and  worship";  and  he  grants  that  the 
powwows  "  doe  most  certainly  by  the  help  of 
the  Divell  work  great  cures."  An  inteUigent 
writer  on  New  York  in  1670  relates  with  im- 
plicit belief  that  the  medicine-men  were  wont 
to  materialize  a  spirit  at  the  green-corn  feast, 
which  now  and  then  went  so  far  as  to  carry 
oiif  some  of  the  spectators  while  the  con- 
juror was  taking  the  collection  customary 
on  all  such  occasions.  But  this  demon  was, 
after  the  manner  of  his  kind,  shy  of  irrev- 
erent skeptics  and  investigators;  he  would 
never  appear  until  all  the  white  men  had  been 
put  out.  A  hundred  years  after  Roger  Will- 
iams, David  Brainerd,  missionary  to  the  Dela- 
wares,  witnessing  the  same  ceremony  did  not 
flee  like  Williams,  but  attempted  exorcism.  "At 
a  distance,  with  my  Bible  in  my  hand,"  he  says, 
"  I  was  resolved,  if  possible,  to  spoil  the  spirit 
of  powwowing,  and  prevent  their  receiving  an 
answer  from  the  infernal  world."  One  reason 
given  for  the  cruel  attack  made  by  the  Dutch 
director,  Kieft,  upon  the  savages  of  New 
"Netherland,  in  1642,  was  that  the  natives  were 
making  him  the  subject  of  diabolical  incanta- 
tions ;  and  in  the  first  code  of  laws  promul- 
gated for  the  government  of  New  York  after 
its  capture  by  the  English,  it  is  enacted  that 
no  Indian  shall  "at  any  time  be  suffered  to 
powaw  or  performe  outward  worship  of  the 
Devil  in  any  Towne  within  this  government." 
Similar  statutes  in  other  colonies  were  aimed 
at  giving  the  devil  discomfort. 

Almost  all  the  tribes  with  which  the  Eng- 
lish came  in  contact  in  the  first  epoch  of  col- 
onization were  of  the  Algonkin  stock,  and 
spoke  cognate  languages.  This  race  of  In- 
dians occupied  the  coast  from  the  St.  Law- 
rence to  the  Carolinas,  and  of  the  interior  it 
held  almost  all  the  territory  north  of  the 
Ohio  between  the  Alleghanies  and  the  Mis- 
sissippi, and  stretched  away  to  the  Saskatch- 
ewan Valley  in  British  America.  John  Smith, 
in  the  waters  of  the  Chesapeake,  and  the 
Dutch  at  Fort  Orange,  where  Albany  now 
stands,  reached  early  the  powerful  Iroquois 
race,  who,  in  the  Five  Nations  of  New  York, 
— the  Hurons  of  Canada,  the  Fries,  and  the 
Neuter  Nation  of  the  intermediate  country 
about  the  lakes,  and  the  Susquehannahs  and 
Tuscaroras  of  the  Piedmont  region  of  Mary- 
land, and  North  Carohna, — formed  an  island, 


<PlJf5?1S 


98 


THE  ABORIGINES  AND    THE    COIONISTS. 


CHART    SHOWING   THE   APPROXIMATE    LOCATION   OF  THE   MORE    PROMINENT   INDIAN   TRIBES   WHEN    FIRST   KNOWN    TO   EUROPEANS. 


or  islands,  wholly  surrounded  by  Algonkins. 
The  southern  colonies  were  in  contact  with 
tribes  of  the  Muscogee  family, —  the  Creeks, 
Choctaws,  and  Chickasaws.  It  is  only  by 
language  and  customs  that  this  classification 
can  be  made ;  the  lines  of  alliance  and  hos- 
tility among  the  Indians  did  not  conform  to 
those  of  race  and  speech,  and  the  universal 
adoption  of  captives,  especially  of  children 
taken  in  war,  stood  in  the  way  of  any  very 
marked  diversity  of  physical  appearance  or 
mental  characteristics. 


LESSONS    LEARNED    FROM    THE    BARBARIANS. 

The  Indian  manner  of  living,  learned  from 
the  climate  and  the  hard  necessities  of  the 
wilderness,  afforded  many  suggestions  to  the 
colonists.  In  Virginia,  as  in  New  England, 
the  planting  of  the  Indians'  corn  saved  the 
first  settlers  from  starvation,  and  the  white 
men  imitated  the  Indian  method  of  planting 
and  cooking  it.  Having  no  iron,  the  savages 
cleared  their  fields  awkwardly  by  girdling  the 


THE  ABORIGINES  AND    THE   COLONISTS. 


99 


trees  and  letting  them  stand,  if  the  forest  was 
not  dense,  or  by  burning  down  the  tree,  and 
then  severing  the  trunk  into  logs  by  means  of 
litde  fires.  The  stone  axes  used  in  some  tribes 
were  accounted  precious  and  were  handed 
down  as  lieir-looms.  They  were  provided  with 
helves  by  sphtting  a  cleft  in  a  young  tree 
and  inserting  the  ax;  here  it  remained  until 
the  wood  had  grown  about  it,  when  a  section 
of  the  sapling  was  taken  out  with  the  ax  in- 
closed. The  Southern  Indian  twisted  a  hick- 
ory withe  about  the  ax-head  for  a  handle. 
Even  after  they  had  got  iron  tools  from  the 
whites,  it  suited  the  indolent  temper  of  the 
race  better  to  burn  down  the  trees  than  to 
chop  them.  They  had  hoes  made  of  Avood, 
of  a  turde-shell  affixed  to  a  stick,  or  of  a 
sharp  stone,  or  a  deer's  shoulder-blade  sim- 
ilarly arranged.  The  corn  was  planted  as  our 
farmers  plant  it,  in  hills  three  or  four  feet  apart, 
with  four  or  five  grains  in  a  hill.  Beans  grew 
about  the  stalk  then  as  now,  and  pumpkins  or 
squashes  filled  the  intervening  space. 

The  very  names  of  our  dishes  are  wit- 
nesses that  the  European-Americans  learned 
many  ways  of  cooking  from  the  Indians. 
Pone,  hominy,  samp,  succotash,  and  supawn 
are  words  borrowed  from  the  aboriginal 
tongues ;  and  the  preparations  of  Indian  corn 
which  bear  these  names  were  served  in  wig- 
wams, no  doubt,  for  ages  before  white  men 
had  ever  seen  the  gay  streamers  and  waving 
tassels  of  the  maize-field.  On  a  hot  stone,  or 
the  bottom  of  an  earthern  vessel  set  before 
the  fire,  the  aboriginal  baked  what  the  pioneer 
afterward  baked  on  his  hoe  and  called  a  hoe- 
cake  ;  the  toothsome  southern  "  ash-cake  " 
was  also  first  made  by  the  squaws,  who 
shrouded  it  in  husks  before  committing  it  to 
the  fire.  The  Indians  knew  how  to  hull  corn 
by  applying  lye.  They  celebrated  the  coming 
of  the  delicious  green  "  roasting-ears  "  by  a 
solemn  feast.  They  nourished  infants  and  in- 
valids with  maize-gruel,  and  they  were  before 
us  also  with  the  merry  pop-corn — "  the  corn 
that  blossomed,"  as  the  Hurons  called  it. 

But  "  our  wild  brethren  and  sisters  "  used 
Indian  corn  in  ways  unknown  to  us;  it  was 
their  chief  food,  and  they  "  put  it  through  all 
its  sauces."  Jerusalem  artichoke?,  dried  cur- 
rants, powdered  mulberries, —  indeed,  almost 
all  other  sorts  of  fruit  and  flesh, — were  mixed 
with  it.  They  cooked  little  doughnuts  of  meal 
by  dropping  them  into  maple  syrup.  One  of 
their  most  useful  preparations  was  probably 
that  which,  in  Virginia,  was  called  rocka- 
hominy,  and  in  New  England,  nokick — sim- 
ply parched  corn  pulverized,  and  carried  in  a 
pouch  in  journeying;  it  was  mixed,  before 
eating,  with  snow  in  winter  and  with  spring 
water  in  summer.    They  used  maize  for  many 


other  things  :  of  the  meal  they  made  poul- 
tices; with  a  bowl  of  mush,  given  by  the 
bride  to  her  new  lord,  some  tribes  celebrated 
marriages ;  by  means  of  the  grains  of  maize, 
to  represent  a  penny  or  stiver,  the  savage 
cast  up  his  accounts  with  the  trader;  grains 
of  corn  were  sent  as  tickets  to  those  who 
were  bidden  to  a  feast;  and,  by  putting  them 
into  gourds  and  turde-shells,  rattles  were 
made.  The  husks  they  braided  for  mats  and 
wrought  into  baskets,  into  light  balls  for  some 
of  their  games,  into  salt-botdes,  and  even 
shoes,  long  before  the  white  man  took  the 
hint  and  made  of  them  chair-bottoms,  floor- 
mats,  and  collars  for  horses.  Maize  was  wor- 
shipped as  a  divinity.  Children  were  kept  in 
the  field  to  watch  the  precious  grain  as  it 
grew;  but  some  of  the  tribes  protected  the 
thievish  crow,  because  of  the  legend  that  a 
crow  had  brought  them  the  first  seed  of  the 
plant  which  supported  their  life  on  so  many 
sides. 

From  the  aborigines  the  settlers  learned 
the  use  of  other  articles  of  food,  such  as  the 
persimmon  of  the  South,  and  the  so-called 
ground-nut  of  the  North.  Penn  found  the 
savages  eating  baked  beans,  as  white  people 
do  yet  in  Boston.  The  festoons  of  drying 
pumpkin  in  the  frontierman's  cabin  are  imi- 
tated from  the  Indians. 

None  knew  better  than  the  red  men  with 
what  last  resorts  to  sustain  life  in  time  of 
famine.  The  roving  Adirondacks,  who  planted 
little,  if  at  all,  were  called  "  tree-eaters  "  by 
their  enemies,  because  they  were  often  obliged 
to  subsist  on  the  "  rock-tripe  "  lichen,  and  the 
inner  bark  and  buds  of  trees.  The  starving 
condition  to  which  many  of  the  European  pio- 
neers were  reduced  obliged  them  to  learn  to 
eat  the  food  with  which  the  savages  supplied 
their  wants.  The  first  Virginia  settlers  were 
glad  to  feed  on  the  green  snake,  and  a  hun- 
dred years  later  the  meat  of  the  rattlesnake 
was  regarded  as  "dainty  food"  by  some  of 
the  planters.  The  Indians  were  not  epicures. 
Even  their  varied  preparations  of  maize  must 
have  been  insipid  from  the  lack  of  salt  in 
most  of  the  tribes.  But  a  savage  appetite  is 
not  fasddious.  Putrid  meat,  whole  frogs,  the 
intestines  of  the  deer  just  as  taken  from  the 
animal,  and  fish-oil  or  bear's  oil,  even  when 
rancid,  were  not  refused.  Fruit  was  not  suf- 
fered to  ripen,  lest  others  should  find  it;  the 
tree  was  felled,  and  the  fruit,  sour  and  acrid 
as  it  was,  consumed  at  once. 

The  Indian's  wigwam  was  too  easily  made 
and  too  well  suited  to  the  pressing  needs  of 
the  settlers,  not  to  be  occasionally  used.  All 
the  tribes  in  the  country  east  of  the  Allegha- 
nies  built  bark-houses,  though  of  varying  de- 
grees of  excellence  and  stability.    In  a  place 


THE  ABORIGINES  AND    THE    COLONISTS. 


of  temporary  dwelling,  or  among  the  more 
shiftless  tribes,  it  was  but  a  rude  little  shel- 
ter, with  a  hole  at  the  side  by  which  the 
owner  entered  and  the  smoke  came  out.  The 
Iroquois  race,  on  the  other  hand,  as  well  as 
some  Algonkin  tribes,  constructed  an  elabo- 
rate compound  wigwam  of  bark,  capable  of 
holding  a  clan  of  many  families,  of  affording 
some  rude  conveniences,  and  of  fending  the 
bitter  northern  cold.  The  Indians  of  Virginia 
and  the  Carolina  coast  built  houses  of  red 
cedar  bark,  sometimes  fifty  or  a  hundred  feet 
long;  while  the  Muscogees,  and  perhaps 
others,  had  winter-houses  of  logs.  But  the 
house  of  bark  was  almost  universal,  and  was 
so  well  suited  to  the  roving  life  and  easy 
habits  of  the  savage  that  even  the  apostle 
Eliot  could  persuade  but  few  of  his  converts 
to  accept  the  white  man's  house.  The  major- 
ity thought  it  an  advantage  that  they  could 
easily  remove  the  wigwam,  and  thus  be  rid  of 
the  vermin. 

In  Virginia,  the  primitive  cabins  of  James- 
town borrowed  the  bark  roof  and  other  feat- 
ures from  the  wigwam.  The  best  of  these 
cabins  were  decorated  with  brightly  colored 
Indian  mats,  which  the  exiled  gentry  of  Lord 
De  la  Warre's  time  playfully  compared  to 
"  arras  hangings  and  tapestry."  In  Massa- 
chusetts many  of  the  poorer  settlers  dwelt  at 
first  in  tents  and  booths,  and  for  a  long  time 
after  in  wigwams.  In  Maryland,  the  first 
comers  shared  an  Indian  village  with  the 
original  owners.  In  East  Jersey,  the  settler 
erected  in  a  single  day  a  wigwam  that  served 
him  until  he  could  build  a  palisade  house. 
The  Quakers  in  West  Jersey  were  glad  to 
winter  in  Indian  wigwams  at  first.  In  the 
warmer  climate  of  Frederica,  in  Georgia, 
bowers  of  palmetto-leaves  took  the  place  of 
the  preliminary  bark  shelter.  Perhaps  the 
only  surviving  relic  of  the  Indian  mode  of 
building  among  the  white  people  in  the  East- 
ern States  is  the  bark  "camp"  —  a  sort  of 
wigwam — still  used  as  a  place  of  temporary 
abode  by  sportsmen  in  the  northern  forests. 

AVith  the  bark-cabin,  with  maize,  and  with 
tobacco,  came  the  only  social  customs  de- 
rived from  the  Indians  by  the  colonists. 
When  a  wigwam  was  to  be  built,  land  to  be 
opened  for  corn,  or  other  difficult  work  to  be 
done,  the  Indian  called  out  all  of  his  neighbors; 
the  husking  of  the  maize,  too,  was  always 
attended  by  a  merry  crowd.  Such  customs 
were  well  suited  to  the  physical  and  social 
wants  of  a  community  in  the  wilderness ;  the 
"  house-raising,"  the  "  wood-chopping  "  and 
the  "apple-peeling"  came  to  be  as  universal 
among  the  colonists  as  among  the  Indians. 
In  New  England,  the  word  "  bee "  was  in- 
vented as  a  generic  name  for  parties  of  this 


sort.  The  practice  of  smoking  together  by  the 
wayside  and  elsewhere,  in  sign  of  friendship, 
which  the  Puritan  law-makers  thought  too 
pleasant  to  be  harmless,  was  an  Indian  cus- 
tom; among  the  tribes  of  the  great  interior 
valley  it  had  come  to  be  in  some  cases  a  state 
solemnity,  so  that  the  calumet  or  peace-pipe 
was  the  safe-conduct  of  an  ambassador. 

The  make-shifts  of  the  wilderness  were  early 
acquired  from  the  savages :  modes  of  hunting, 
of  trapping,  and  of  traveling,  the  "blazing" 
of  trees  to  mark  new  forest-paths,  the  twisting 
of  ropes  from  the  inner  bark  of  the  slippery  elm, 
and  other  devices  for  meeting  the  exigences 
of  forest  living.  For  years  the  Plymouth  pil- 
grims pounded  their  corn  in  wooden  mortars, 
after  the  primitive  manner  of  their  neighbors; 
and  the  same  practice  prevailed  in  other 
pioneer  settlements.  The  Virginians  were 
still  using  the  fish-weir  at  the  period  of  the 
Revolution.  When  the  Southern  or  Western 
farmer,  dressing  his  swine,  drops  hot  stones 
into  a  barrel  of  water  until  it  boils,  he 
makes  use  of  a  device  common  to  those 
tribes  of  Indians  that  had  only  wooden  ves- 
sels. The  making  of  sugar  from  the  maple 
was  practiced  by  the  Indians,  who  boiled  the 
sap  in  earthen  pots.  The  pine-knot  candle,  so 
generally  used  in  the  cabins  of  the  colonists, 
had  lighted  the  smoky  wigwams,  no  doubt, 
for  ages  before  Europeans  arrived.  The  canoe 
made  by  excavating  a  log  is  still  in  use:  the 
Indian  wrought  it  painfully  by  burning  the 
wood  and  scraping  it  out  with  shells  or  stones. 
If  one  may  believe  the  reports,  there  were 
some  canoes,  probably  of  iDark,  among  the 
Long  Island  tribes,  that  would  carry  eighty 
men  apiece  ;  those  carrying  half  that  number 
were  not  uncommon.  The  birch-bark  canoe 
— the  Indian's  masterpiece  —  still  holds  its 
own  among  the  Northern  trappers,  guides, 
and  voyageius,  as  does  also  the  ingenious  net- 
work snow-shoe.  So,  too,  the  dressing  of  skins 
with  the  brains  of  the  animal,  and  the  making 
of  basket-splints  by  pounding  ash-wood  until 
the  "  growths  "  separate,  are  lessons  which  the 
frontierman  learned  from  the  savage. 

It  is  evident  that  the  contributions  of  the 
red  race  to  pioneer  life  in  this  country  were 
many  and  important.  In  estimating  the  in- 
fluence of  the  Indians  on  colonial  character, 
we  must  take  into  account  the  corruption  of 
manners  on  the  frontier,  proceeding  from  the 
trickery  which  always  accompanies  trade  with 
ignorant  and  childish  savages,  and  from  the 
irregular  relations  of  Avhite  men  with  Indian 
women.  The  idleness  and  the  paucity  of 
moral  restrictions  in  savage  life  rendered  it 
attractive  to  reckless  men.  The  New  Eng- 
land lawgivers  punished  dwellers  in  the  tents 
of  the  heathen  for  their  pagan  way  of  living; 


THE  ABORIGINES  AND    THE    COLONISTS. 


one  such  straggler  is  described  as  "  a  sad 
wretch ;  he  never  heard  a  sermon  but  once 
these  fourteen  years."  The  many  degen- 
erate white  men  who  hngered  among  the 
Southern  tribes  are  spoken  of  by  the  natural- 
ist Brickell  as  "  a  lost  and  unfortunate  sort  of 
people."  These  Southern  lotus-eaters  attrib- 
uted their  long  loitering  to  the  waters  of 
Herbert's  Spring  at  the  head  of  the  Savannah  : 
whoever  drank  of  this  fountain  was  doomed 
to  spend  seven  years  in  tlie  wilderness 
beyond.  The  superstition  became  a  fixed 
one ;  men  fainting  with  thirst  passed  by  the 
fatal  fountain  without  drinking,  fearing  to 
*'  pluck  the  fruit  of  the  forbidden  ground." 


DECAY    OF    THE    OLD    LIFE    OF    THE    INDIAN. 

On  the  other  hand,  every  part  of  the 
Indian's  life  was  disturbed  by  the  approxima- 
tion of  civihzation.  Savages  who  had  not 
yet  advanced  beyond  the  stage  of  stone 
hatchets  and  chronic  inter-tribal  warfare, 
were  not  suffered  to  develop  into  that  of  iron 
implements  and  commercial  activity  through 
tedious  cycles  by  the  slow  processes  of  race 
culture  and  natural  selection,  but  were  over- 
whelmed by  the  premature  arrival  of  a  com- 
plex civilization  out  of  another  world.  The 
flint  hatchet  and  the  spear  tipped  with  deer's 
horn  did  not  grow  by  degrees  into  the  thousand 
implements  of  the  world  of  artificers ;  they 
were  abolished  suddenly  while  yet  the  people 
whose  intelligence  was  gauged  by  them  were 
incapable  of  accepting  the  new  life  which  had 
engulfed  their  old.  The  economic  equilibrium 
of  savagery  was  overturned.  The  hoe  was  a 
helpful  addition  to  the  Indian's  power,  but 
fire-arms  and  the  white  man's  commodities 
broke  down  the  old  relation  of  supply  and 
demand  in  his  life ;  the  necessity  for  exertion 
became  less  strenuous,  wild  animals  were 
more  easily  killed  with  the  new  weapons,  and 
unwonted  supplies  could  be  bought  from  the 
trader  with  furs  and  deer-skins.  Under  the 
augmented  demand  the  fur-bearing  animals 
soon  grew  scarce  ;  with  the  increased  facilities 
for  capture,  game  disappeared.  By  this  time 
new  habits  had  been  formed,  and  new  wants 
aggravated  the  misery  of  savage  life  ;  the  son 
of  the  fierce,  indolent,  and  independent  war- 
rior found  himself  a  parasite  —  a  hewer  of 
wood  for  the  white  man.  It  is  not  surprising 
that,  in  despair  and  blind  resentment,  the 
Indian  tribe  sometimes  dashed  itself  to  pieces 
in  futile  resistance  to  the  incoming  civihzation. 

Not  that  Indian  life  was,  at  its  best,  a  desir- 
able or  endurable  mode  of  existence  for  any 
but  one  who  had  the  tastes  of  a  savage.  It  was 


squalid,  inconvenient,  and  miserable,  with  the 
addition  of  life-long  insecurity  growing  out  of 
perpetual  inter-tribal  warfare.  Even  in  the  cab- 
ins of  the  Creek  tribes,  and  in  the  fixed  bark- 
houses  of  the  Iroquois-Huron  race,  there  was 
no  furniture  but  the  rudest  implements,  and  a 
platform  covered  with  skins  or  mats  for  a  bed, 
and  used  by  all  the  family.  There  were  no 
provisions  for  privacy  or  decency.  The  higher 
Algonkins,  like  the  Powhatans  and  some 
others,  were  not  better  provided  for;  while 
the  roving  tribes  of  mere  hunters  had  never 
more  of  household  goods  than  could  be  con- 
veniently packed  upon  the  back  of  a  squaw, 
and  carried  by  a  strap  across  her  forehead. 
If  we  could  assemble  the  implements  and 
utensils  possessed  by  all  the  different  tribes, 
—  the  knives  of  horn,  the  baskets  of  husks 
and  splints,  the  pails  of  bark;  the  mats  for 
doors,  house-lining,  and  beds;  the  bone  awls 
for  sewing  and  drilling  wampum ;  the  canoes 
of  various  sorts;  the  wooden,  earthenware,  and 
even  soap-stone  vessels ;  the  spears,  bows, 
arrows,  war-clubs,  and  stone  axes,  with  the 
rude  threddles  of  the  Muscogees, —  we  should 
have  a  considerable  variety.  But  the  num- 
ber of  kinds  possessed  by  any  one  tribe  was 
small,  and  the  articles  owned  by  any  one 
family  were  exceedingly  few. 

The  lightly  built  Indian  village  was  usually 
removed  when  the  fire-wood  became  scarce 
or  the  corn-ground  showed  signs  of  ex- 
haustion ;  whole  tribes  would  be  jostled  out 
of  their  places  by  an  aggressive  enemy,  who 
made  their  villages  too  insecure  even  for  the 
endurance  of  a  savage.  By  a  few  reverses, 
a  tribe  might  be  partly  exterminated  and 
wholly  broken  up.  Its  remaining  members 
were  then  forced  to  incorporate  with  other 
nations  for  protection.  Thus  boundaries, 
always  uncertain,  were  ever  receding,  or 
advancing,  or  wholly  vanishing. 

The  arrowheads  of  flint  or  horn,  turkey-spur 
or  eagle-claw,  the  vessels  of  earthenware  or 
steatite,  the  fish-hooks  of  bone  and  the  richly 
decorated  costumes  of  buckskin,  silk-grass, 
turkey  and  other  plumage,  and  of  fur, —  some- 
times skillfully  painted  on  the  smooth  side, 
so  that  "  they  looked  like  lace,"  or  decor- 
ated with  dyed  porcupine-quills  and  the 
bright-colored  skins  of  ducks'  heads, —  showed 
that  the  Indians  possessed  ingenuity,  and,  on 
occasion,  patient  application.  But  the  range 
of  their  ingenuity  was  narrow,  and  their  dil- 
igence needed  the  goad  of  necessity,  or  the 
spur  of  their  inordinate  passions  for  revenge 
and  display.  There  was  never  among  them  a 
spontaneous  movement  to  acquire  the  arts  of 
the  white  man.  It  was  enough  for  them  to 
get,  by  trade  or  pilfering,  or  in  war,  the  arti- 
cles which  the  Europeans  made.  Of  all  the  new 


THE  ABORIGINES  AND    THE    COLONISTS. 


plants  brought  in  by  the  colonists,  the  Iro- 
quois adopted  only  the  apple  and  pear  trees, 
and  the  Delaware  peaches.  The  Indians 
often  preferred  to  buy  their  tobacco  of  the 
white  man,  and  they  even  sometimes  de- 
pended on  trading  furs  for  a  supply  of  maize, 
thus  tending  to  lose  their  small  agricultural 
advancement. 

Almost  every  convenience  procured  from 
the  Europeans  brought  disturbance  to  the  old 
mode  of  living.  The  dog  having  been,  with  the 
exception  of  tame  birds,  the  Indian's  only  brute 
companion,  it  was  long  before  his  life  could 
be  adjusted  to  the  sHght  addition  of  a  second 
domestic  animal.  The  Hurons,  on  receiving 
horses  from  the  French,  were  filled  with 
childish  delight,  and  the  men  volunteered  to 
assist  the  women  in  getting  fire-wood  —  the 
driving  of  horses  was  a  new  diversion  for 
idlers.  But  the  gift  was  a  fatal  one  at  first : 
the  horses  ate  the  unfenced  maize,  and  the 
village  was  thrown  into  consternation.  When 
iron  and  brass  kettles,  with  poor  iron  hatchets 
manufactured  on  purpose  for  the  Indian 
trade,  could  be  had  in  exchange  for  beaver- 
skins,  there  was  no  longer  need  for  the  la- 
borious making  of  earthen  pots  or  stone 
hatchets ;  the  rudimentary  arts  of  pottery  and 
stone-cutting  were  quickly  forgotten,  and  the 
Indian  took  a  step  backward  in  becoming 
by  so  much  less  an  artificer  and  by  so  much 
more  a  mere  hunter.  Even  the  shell-beads 
which  the  sea-coast  Indians  manufactured 
with  so  much  toil  and  painstaking,  for  orna- 
ment and  money,  were  better  made  by  the 
Dutch  at  Hackensack  and  Albany.  The 
elaborate  fur  garments  were  ripped  up  and 
sold,  and  their  kind  made  no  more ;  the  duffel 
cloth,  without  so  much  as  a  hem  or  seam,  was 
thrown  about  the  shoulder,  and  the  Indian 
was  more  than  before  a  savage.  His  guns, 
his  traps,  his  knives,  his  hatchets,  his  outer 
garment,  and  his  wampum  money,  were  all 
purchased  in  exchange  for  skins,  and  thus  he 
lost  his  skill,  exterminated  his  game,  and  sac- 
rificed his  independence. 

What  made  the  lean  and  hungry  fox  think 
his  lot  better  than  that  of  the  pampered  house- 
dog was  the  collar-mark  on  the  dog's  neck. 
That  which  was  dearest  to  the  Indian  in  his 
rugged  life  was  its  entire  freedom.  From  in- 
fancy he  was  subject  to  almost  no  authority, 
either  of  parent  or  chieftain.  Where  there  was 
litde  property  and  entire  Hberty  of  secession 
from  the  band,  the  control  of  a  chief  was  of 
necessity  small.  The  men  and  women  of  the 
tribe  were  rather  managed  than  governed  by 
their  head  men.  The  execution  of  penalties 
was  left  almost  always  to  private  revenge ; 
quarrels  were  settled  without  the  intervention 
of  authority,  unless  a  dispute  threatened  the 


integrity  of  the  band,  in  which  case  it  was 
taken  in  hand  and  managed  by  the  craft  of 
the  chief  and  the  council.  If  a  member  of  the 
tribe  was  troublesome,  and  his  death  regarded 
as  desirable  for  public  reasons,  suggestions 
were  adroitly  throv/n  out  that  he  was  a 
worker  of  evil  charms,  and  all  the  ills  that 
happened  in  the  village  came  tlienceforth  to  be 
attributed  to  his  malice  and  magic ;  he  was  at 
length  put  to  death  in  obedience  to  a  popular 
clamor,  while  the  chief  men  who  had  purposed 
his  destruction  did  not  appear  in  the  matter. 
In  rare  cases  of  sedition  or  witchcraft,  the 
council  appointed  executioners  to  stab  the 
offender. 

It  is  related  that  once,  among  the  Hurons 
of  Canada,  a  public  execution  was  deemed 
needful  under  the  following  circumstances  :  A 
man  had  "  cast  away  "  his  v/ife,  but  she  went 
in  the  annual  hunting-party,  accompanied  by 
her  brothers.  Perceiving  by  accident  that 
her  husband,  who  was  of  the  party,  was 
watching  her,  she  warned  her  brothers,  and, 
with  the  youngest  of  them,  concealed  herself 
at  night  in  a  tree  near  their  lodge,  where 
she  was  witness  to  a  struggle  in  which  the 
rest  of  her  brothers  were  slain  by  her  husband 
and  his  friends.  The  woman,  after  many 
narrow  escapes,  contrived  to  reach  the  village 
first,  where  she  related  the  occurrence  to  her 
own  family,  and  then  to  the  council,  giving  for 
assurance  of  the  truth  of  her  story  the  state- 
ment that  one  of  the  assailants  had  been 
badly  bitten  in  the  hand.  It  was  not  thought 
best  to  leave  so  flagrant  a  crime  to  be  avenged 
by  a  family  several  of  whose  Avarriors  had 
been  killed  at  a  blow.  A  feast  was  therefore 
prepared  in  the  council-house  in  honor  of  the 
returning  party,  who,  besides  having  good 
luck,  were  laden  with  the  spoils  of  the  slain. 
The  hunters  related  their  adventures  to  the 
guests,  as  the  manner  is  at  such  times,  and 
told,  with  apparent  grief,  of  the  irruption  of 
enemies  who  had  cut  off  those  that  were  miss- 
ing. The  man  with  a  bandaged  hand  said 
that  a  beaver  had  bitten  him.  Then,  from 
their  concealment  behind  a  mat,  were  suddenly 
brought  forth  the  woman  and  the  youth  to 
confront  the  assassins  v/ith  the  story  of  their 
crime.  When  this  circumstantial  accusation 
was  finished,  young  men  who  had  been 
placed  next  to  the  criminals,  stabbed  them  to 
death,  the  murderers  submitting  to  their  fate 
without  complaint  or  resistance,  after  the 
manner  of  an  Indian  doomed  by  his  own 
tribe. 

Under  the  system  of  private  retaliation  for 
private  offenses,  and  of  tribal  vengeance  for 
public  or  foreign  ones,  the  hideous  passion  of 
inveterate  revenge  took  the  place  of  patriot- 
ism and  religion  in  the  brain  of  the  Indian. 


THE  ABORIGINES  AND    THE    COIONISTS. 


103 


It  was  the  pride  of  an  injured  man  to  dissem- 
ble, but  never  to  forget — wreaking  vengeance 
long  years  after  the  offense.  Out  of  this  in- 
satiable lust  for  revenge  came  the  ever-recur- 
ring and  almost  unintermitting  warfare  be- 
tween tribes.  Battle  was,  indeed,  a  necessary- 
pastime  for  idle  young  braves,  and  peace  was 
irksome,  so  that  war  was  often  sought  merely 
for  the  sake  of  excitement,  and  for  the  oppor- 
tunity it  gave  of  acquiring  distinction.  It  was 
this  passion  for  revenge,  uplifted  to  a  patriotic 
and  pious  duty,  that  brought  about  the  cruelty 
to  prisoners  w^hich  makes  the  history  of  In- 
dian wars  one  long  horror  of  human  perdition. 
In  every  village  through  which  the  captive 
passed,  tortures  of  one  kind  or  another  were 
inflicted  by  men,  women,  and  children,  who 
thus  consoled  themselves  for  the  loss  of 
friends.  Sometimes  it  was  the  gauntlet,  some- 
times a  widow  would  solace  her  spirit  by 
cutting  off  a  joint  of  a  finger,  or  biting  out  a 
nail.  If  the  prisoner  did  not  chance  to  be 
adopted  as  a  slave  into  some  cabin,  in  place 
of  a  dead  member,  he  was  at  last  "  cast  into 
the  fire,"  under  which  phrase  there  lurked  the 
indescribable  tortures  which  were  inflicted  for 
dreary  hours  upon  the  defiant  victim.  In 
some  tribes  these  torture-scenes  were  con- 
ducted by  the  women.  The  eating  of  the 
flesh  of  victims  burned  at  the  stake  seems  to 
have  grown  out  of  a  desire  to  wreak  a  final 
and  ferocious  vengeance  on  his  body,  though 
there  were  warriors  who  boasted  a  great  relish 
for  human  flesh.  In  war-time,  the  northern 
tribesmen  were  accustomed  to  "  subsist  on 
the  enemy "  in  a  literal  way.  Denonville, 
Governor  of  Canada,  having  vanquished 
the  Senecas  in  1687,  was  horrified  at  seeing 
twenty-five  of  the  latter,  who  had  been  killed 
in  battle,  quartered,  boiled,  and  devoured  by 
his  Ottawa  allies;  and  six  years  later,  the 
New  York  commander.  Major  Peter  Schuyler, 
was  not  pleased  to  find  a  Frenchman's  hand 
in  the  soup  served  to  him  in  the  camp  of  his 
Iroquois  soldiers. 

In  war,  as  at  home,  the  Indian  refused 
discipline,  following  the  leader  whom  he 
trusted,  and  returning  home  whenever  he  be- 
came discontented  with  the  conduct  of  the 
expedition.  But,  despite  his  lawlessness  and 
idleness,  his  freedom  was  checked  on  many 
sides  by  the  unseen  bands  of  traditional  cus- 
tom and  tyrannical  public  sentiment.  What 
he  must  do  in  certain  contingencies  was  firmly 
prescribed  for  him  by  the  immemorial  usage 
of  his  race,  and  it  was  rare  that  any  Indian 
was  strong  enough  to  break  through  this 
chain.  Trammeled  even  in  small  matters  by 
fixed  customs  and  an  intricate  etiquette,  as 
well  as  by  superstitions  innumerable,  he  never 
submitted  to  any  despotism  besides.  Attempts 


of  white  men  to  enslave  Indians  were  gen- 
erally fatal  to  the  savages,  who  were  as  un- 
wonted to  such  restraints  as  other  creatures 
of  the  wilderness. 

Excitement  of  some  kind  was  indispensa- 
ble to  relieve  the  tedium  of  the  idleness  in 
which  a  great  part  of  savage  life  was  spent. 
The  intervals  between  hunting  and  war-par- 
ties were  filled  up  by  an  inconceivable  num- 
ber of  ungraceful  dances  of  various  kinds,  all 
regulated  by  a  rather  complicated  etiquette^ 
many  mixed  with  superstition,  and  some  end- 
ing in  debauch.  There  were  feasts  of  many 
sorts,  at  which  those  not  invited  might  crowd 
the  door-ways  as  spectators,  or  strip  off  the 
bark  sides  of  the  cabins  to  see  the  cere- 
monies ;  and  there  were  athletic  games,  and 
games  of  hazard,  with  dice  of  bones  or  cherry- 
stones, in  which  the  excited  players  would  often 
lose  all  their  possessions,  not  sparing  to  wager 
their  wives ;  the  reckless  gamester  sometimes 
even  staked  his  own  liberty,  and  became  a 
slave  to  the  winner  until  his  friends  could  re- 
deem him.  Sometimes  the  lucky  arrival  of 
prisoners  in  transit,  who  could  be  beaten  as 
they  ran  the  gauntlet,  furnished  diversion, 
and  on  grand  occasions  the  savage  could  re- 
pair to  the  council-house  as  to  a  theater,  to 
see  the  long-drawn  torture  of  a  captive  —  a 
sight  as  well  suited  to  his  taste  as  bull-fight- 
ing to  a  Spaniard's,  or  bear-baiting  and 
cock-fighting  to  that  of  our  English  ancestors. 


OBSTACLES    TO    CIVILIZATION    AMONG    THE 
INDIANS. 

Attempts  w^ere  made  in  every  colony  tO' 
civilize  the  Indians,  but  to  these  their  im- 
memorial and  inflexible  customs  offered  in 
many  cases  an  insuperable  barrier.  Not  only 
the  natural  indolence  and  ferocity  of  the  in- 
dividual, but  the  whole  economic  system  of 
the  American  tribes  tended  to  promote  a 
barbarous  unthrift.  All  the  rewards  which 
civilized  life  gives  to  industry  and  frugality 
were  lacking.  The  family  who  had  prudently 
grown  a  larger  supply  of  corn  than  its  neigh- 
bor was  compelled  by  custom  to  share  with 
those  less  provident.  The  inflexible  law  of 
savage  hospitality  assured  to  the  idler  a  sub- 
sistence in  the  wigwams  of  his  neighbors,  and 
impaired  the  sense  of  property.  In  some  of  the 
tribes,  at  least,  the  estate  of  a  man  deceased 
was  divided  by  his  relatives  without  regard 
to  his  widow  and  children,  who  by  prescrip- 
tion belonged  to  another  cabin  and  another 
"  totem,"  and  were  not  accounted  of  his  kin- 
dred in  such  sense  as  to  inherit  his  goods. 


THE  ABORIGINES  AND    THE    COLONISTS. 


104 

The  wife's  property,  likewise,  did  not  belong 
in  any  case  to  the  husband. 

Deep-seated  hereditary  savagery,  which 
regales  itself  with  torture  and  cannibalism, 
cannot  be  removed  in  one  generation;  and 
before  time  could  be  given  for  permanent  re- 
sults of  missionary  efforts,  the  savages  were 
effaced  or  swallowed  up  by  civilization.  The 
Indian  mind  was  involved  in  a  compli- 
cated mass  of  superstition  which  rendered 
the  adoption  of  a  new  religion  difficult.  _  Fet- 
ichism,  mixed  with  abject  dread  of  invisible 
demons  that  must  be  appeased,  an  incred- 
ible reverence  for  dreams,  and  a  perpetual 
fear  of  witchcraft,  were  the  things  that  stood 
for  religion  among  them.  Some  tribes  had 
images  that  were  used  for  charms,  and  the 
veneration  of  these  rose  occasionally  into 
something  like  idolatry.  The  Indians  threw 
tobacco  to  the  spirit  supposed  to  inhabit 
water-falls  and  whirlpools,  and  among  the 
Iroquois  the  torturing  and  eating  of  their 
enemies  partook  of  the  nature  of  human 
sacrifice  to  the  demon  Aireskoui.  There  were 
in  some  tribes  conjurations  addressed  to  in- 
ferior animals  and  other  objects  of  reverence. 
Fire, —  which  cooked  food  when  pleased  and 
consumed  the  cabin  when  angry, — the  sun, 
the  four  winds,  and  all  things  that  were  "  subtle, 
crafty,  and  beyond  human  power,"  were  super- 
natural. The  powwows  or  seers,  who  seem  to 
have  wrought  themselves  into  trances,  and  to 
have  added  to  these  much  of  juggling  impos- 
ture, maintained  a  great  ascendency  over  the 
common  people.  It  was  they  who,  with  danc- 
ing, contortion,  shaking  rattles,  and  howling, 
exorcised  the  spirit  that  caused  sickness,  often 
with  mysterious  passes  drawing  visibly  with 
their  teeth  from  various  parts  of  the  patient's 
body  bits  of  hair  and  bone  which  had  been  in- 
serted by  witchcraft,  to  the  no  small  damage 
of  the  sick  man's  health.  Under  their  direc- 
tion the  tribes  held  prolonged  huggermug- 
gerings,  in  dry  seasons,  to  bring  rain  upon 
the  fainting  fields  of  maize. 

Superstition  settled  many  questions  of  war 
and  of  tribal  policy.  A  band  of  Indians  emi- 
grated in  a  body  from  the  Minnisink  region, 
to  avoid  a  malign  genius  of  the  place.  A 
party  of  Senecas  chased  a  young  Catawba 
warrior  for  five  miles.  He  succeeded  in  kill- 
ing seven  of  them  before  they  captured  him. 
The  next  day,  when  he  was  led  out  to  the 
torture,  he  escaped  by  a  sudden  dash,  leaped 
into  the  river  amid  a  shower  of  bullets,  and 
swam  under  water  like  an  otter,  only  rising 
to  take  breath.  On  the  opposite  bank  he 
made  insulting  gestures  at  his  enemies,  and 
fled  away.  Of  those  who  pursued  him,  he 
slew  a  party  of  five  while  they  slept,  mangled 
and  scalped  them,  and  then  returning  in  the 


night,  dug  up  and  scalped  the  seven  whom  he 
had  slain  at  first.  A  solemn  council  of  his  foes 
decided  that  he  must  be  a  wizard,  and  that 
pursuit  would  therefore  be  useless. 

Many  were  the  stories  of  the  transforma- 
tion of  wizards  told  by  the  Indian  fires ;  in 
such  tales  consisted  much  of  their  folk-lore. 
There  was  one  of  a  village  whose  chief  men 
died  of  a  plague,  "  once  upon  a  time."  The 
conjuring  medicine-men  knew  well  that  the 
bird  of  death  which  flapped  its  wings  and 
uttered  its  cries  every  night  over  the  cabins 
of  those  doomed  to  destruction  could  be  none 
other  than  a  transformed  wizard,  but  all  their 
arts  availed  nothing.  At  last  a  deputation 
from  the  doomed  village  visited  the  lodge  of 
The -Man -With -Very-Long-Hair — a  hermit 
of  the  wilderness — to  implore  assistance.  He 
made  them  some  charmed  arrows.  With  one 
of  these  they  wounded  the  fatal  bird.  The 
next  day  a  young  man  living  in  a  poor  wig- 
wam with  his  mother  was  reported  to  be  very 
ill.  Some  of  the  elders  visited  him,  and 
found,  as  they  expected,  the  magical  arrow 
sticking  in  his  flesh ;  under  pretense  of  with- 
drawing it,  they  gave  it  such  a  thrust  as  to 
kill  him. 

Whatever  a  man  dreamed  of  must  be  given 
him  at  all  hazards  to  save  him  from  fatal 
calamity.  In  one  instance  a  wife  was  sur- 
rendered to  a  dreamer ;  in  another  a  slave  was 
killed  and  cooked  for  one;  in  yet  another, 
where  the  sleeper  had  dreamed  of  capture 
and  torture,  he  persuaded  his  friends  to  mimic 
capture  and  subject  him  to  a  considerable 
torture,  to  prevent  his  falling  into  the  hands 
of  his  enemies.  Designing  men  often  used 
dreams  to  procure  what  they  coveted,  and 
there  are  amusing  stories  of  retorts  in  kind 
on  such  dreamers. 

A  trade  in  charms  was  carried  on  in  some, 
if  not  in  all,  the  tribes.  Old  men  no  longer 
able  to  hunt  either  set  up  for  doctors,  or  man- 
ufactured and  sold  a  "beson"  —  that  is,  a 
medicine  which,  taken  inteniaUy  with  exact 
and  appropriate  ceremonies,  would  give  luck 
to  the  hunter.  All  of  their  medicines  were  ad- 
ministered with  precise  ceremonies  necessary 
to  their  efficacy,  and  the  greater  part  of  In- 
dian medical  practice  was  the  sheerest  im- 
posture and  howling  nonsense.  They  knew 
the  value  of  certain  simples  of  the  country, 
they  were  skillful  in  dressing  wounds ;  and  the 
"  sweating-house,"  in  which  they  were  accus- 
tomed to  parboil  themselves,  after  the  manner 
of  a  Russian  vapor-bath,  was  serviceable  for 
cleanliness,  if  not  for  cures. 

A  serious  obstacle  to  the  civilizing  influence 
of  the  missionary  among  the  Indians  was 
the  wide  difference  between  the  moral  stand- 
ards and  social  conventions  of  the  white  race 


^f^. 


'  Jhema'^-.troj-thur   {^Jh:n, 


Vol.  XXVI.— II. 


io6 


THE  ABORIGINES  AND    THE   COLONISTS. 


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FROM     THE    ORIGINAL    DRAWING     MADE     V.\    JOHN     '.VHITE,    IN 
1585.       (BY    PERMISSION     OF    THK     BRITISH     MFSKUM.) 

and  the  red.  Falsehood  and  craft  were  as 
much  esteemed  among  the  American  sav- 
ages as  among  those  of  Lacedsmon ;  per- 
fidy and  cruel  treachery  were  matters  for 
public  boast  in  a  war-dance.  Chastity,  as 
such,  was  held  in  no  repute.  The  wife  must 
be  faithful  to  her  husband  while  she  remained 
with  him,  and  he  might  punish  her  infidelity 
on  detection,  or  he  might  beat  her  paramour 
cruelly, —  even  to  death,  if  he  chose ;  but  if  the 
woman's  unchastity  were  with  the  husband's 
consent,  there  was  no  odium  attached  to  it. 
In  most  of  the  tribes  polygamy  was  allowed ; 
in  all  the  man  might  "  throw  away  "  his  wife 
when  he  chose,  and  she  was  equally  free  to 
leave  him.  Marriages  for  a  limited  time,  and 
alliances  on  probation  with  a  view  to  mar- 
riage, were  often  contracted.  In  the  unmar- 
ried women  unchastity  was  common  and 
unreproved  in  all  the  tribes.  In  many  tribes 
the  chiefship  was  prudently  made  hered- 
itary through  the  female  line.  The  sentiment 
of  purity  did  not  exist  among  American  sav- 
ages, the  property  sense  was  feeble,  and  hu- 
man life  was  held  very  cheap — the  payment 
of  a  few  belts  of  wampum  being  sufficient,  in 
many  cases  of  homicide,  to  take  the  hatchet 
out  of  the  head  of  the  slain,  to  bury  him  de- 
cently, and  to  wipe  the  tears  from  the  eyes 
of  his  kindred, — in  the  words  of  the  ceremony 
with  which  the  shell-money  was  presented. 

The  Indian  notions  of  morality  were  the 
outgrowth  of  Indian  life.  To  the  state  of 
the  savage  his  code  of  social  conventions  was 
appropriate ;  the  white  man's  moral  standard 
would  have  been  inapplicable  and  impossible 
to  him,  so  long  as  he  remained  a  wandering 
hunter  and  fisherman,  and  a  guerilla  soldier. 
Hence,  it  was  seen  by  such  philanthropists  as 
Eliot  that  tillage  and  fixed  dweUings  must 
precede  the  advent  of  a  new  religion  and  a 
new  code  of  law. 


MISSIONARY    AND    OTHER    PHILANTHROPIC 
EXPERIMENTS. 

The  French  Jesuits  who  entered  by  way  of 
Canada  were  the  first  to  propagate  Christian- 
ity among  the  Indians  within  the  limits  of  the 
thirteen  original  States.  The  French  of  every 
class,  indeed,  succeeded  better  in  insinuating 
themselves  into  the  favor  of  the  savages  than 
the  English.  The  Frenchman  was  the  quicker- 
witted,  more  alert,  flexible,  good-humored, 
and  adventurous;  by  these  traits  and  his 
suavity,  he  was  far  better  qualified  to  ingra- 
tiate himself  with  his  antipodes,  than  the 
cooler,  stiffer,  and  more  regularly  moral  Eng- 
lishman. The  eager  and  undaunted  zeal  of 
the  Jesuit,  that  shrank  from  no  peril  or  hard- 
ship, was  pressed  forward  by  a  discipline 
much  more  austere  than  a  military  regime — 
a  discipline  enforced  by  the  rewards  and  penal- 
ties of  eternity.  Miracles  are  always  wrought 
by  this  sort  of  devoted  enthusiasm ;  it  made 
Brebceuf  patient  and  defiant  amidst  the  hellish 
tortures  of  the  Iroquois  ;  it  sent  the  irre- 
pressible Marquette  from  one  untamed  tribe 
to  another,  in  the  great  unknown  valley, 
until  he  sank  and  died  on  the  remote  shores 
of  Lake  Michigan ;  and  it  carried  the  already 
maimed  Father  Jogues,  in  obedience  to  the 
hard  orders  of  his  superiors,  back  to  the 
cruel  Iroquois,  certain  of  death,  and  shrink- 
ing in  every  nerve  from  the  probable  inflic- 
tion of  such  torture  as  he  had  seen  others 
suffer.  There  is  a  whole  world  of  pathos  in 
Jogues'  brave,  half-despairing  words,  '■'■  Ibo 
et  110)1  redibo — I  shall  go,  and  not  come 
back." 

The  Jesuit  worship  and  teaching  was  more 
easily  propagated  than  the  dogmatic,  inflexible 
and  naked  system  of  the  Puritan,  or  the  more 
formal  but  not  imposing  worship  of  the  Eng- 
lish Church.  The  Amalingans  whom  Father 
Rale  baptized  almost  in  a  body  were  first 
impressed  with  the  superiority  of  Christianity 
by  their  deputies  having  seen  the  procession 
of  the  consecrated  host  conducted  with  much 
pomp  and  with  something  like  magnificence  in 
a  village  of  the  Abnakis.  Rale  knew  well  how 
to  take  advantage  of  a  barbarian's  susceptibil- 
ity to  display.  Skillful  in  the  art  of  turning 
wood,  and  knowing  something  of  painting, 
he  labored  with  his  own  hands  to  render 
his  church  in  the  wilderness  of  Maine  im- 
posing. This  externalism  gave  Catholicism  a 
great  advantage  on  all  sides.  The  medi- 
cine-men were  natural  rivals  and  enemies 
of  the  "  black-robes,"  who  preached  against 
their  powwowing,  but,  on  the  plan  of  keeping 


THE   ABORIGINES  AND    THE    COIONISTS. 


107 


on  the  safe  side,  even  they  were  wilHng 
that  their  children  should  get  whatever  bene- 
fit there  might  be  in  the  mysterious,  and,  to 
them,  magical  rite  of  baptism.  "  In  this  con- 
sists the  best  fruits  which  our  mission  at  first 
receives,"  writes  one  of  the  Fathers,  "  and 
which  is  the  most  certain ;  for,  among  the 
great  number  of  infants  whom  we  baptize, 
not  a  year  passes  but  many  die  before  they 
are  able  to  use  their   reason."    One   of  the 


not  to  be  dissolved,  was  a  saying  hard  to 
be  received  by  savages.  Permanent  mar- 
riage is  indispensable  to  a  high  civilization, 
but  its  necessity  is  not  felt  among  a  barbarous 
people,  where  property  is  not  accumulated, 
where  the  wife  carries  the  chief  burden  of  the 
family  in  any  case,  and  where  the  domestic 
affections  have  not  yet  passed  from  brute  feel- 
ing into  human  sentiment.  Virtues  common 
enough  in  a  regular  and  industrious  society 


Jesuits  told  the  captive  minister  of  Deerfield    are  not  easily  preserved  in  the  idle,  wander- 


that  he  always  charged  the  Indians,  when 
they  went  against  the  English  settlements,  to 
baptize  the  children  before  killing  them.  This 
doctrine  of  the  benefit  of  the  exact  observance 
of  sacraments  and  other  ceremonials  was  en- 
tirely comprehensible  to  the  Indian's  mind, 
and  was  in  the  line  of  his  habitual  thinking. 
It  was  not  needful  to  exact  an  advanced 
civilization;  the" Catholic  Church  was  able  to 
bend  itself  to  the  state  of  the  wild  man,  and 
to  arouse  in  him  the  profoundest  enthusiasms 
of  which  his  nature  was  capable.  Voluntary 
fasts  of  the  severest  sort  were  common  among 
the  Indians,  on  arrival  at  manhood,  in  mourn- 


ing, and  promiscuous  life  of  the  wigwam. 

The  patient  heroism  of  the  French  Jesuits 
must  always  excite  admiration,  but  their 
labors  for  the  Indian  race  have  produced 
no  larger  or  more  enduring  result  than  those 
of  others  who  have  spent  themselves  in  the 
attempt  to  elevate  the  American  savages. 
From  the  first,  the  English  adventurers  to 
America,  having  no  conception  of  the  diffi- 
culty of  changing  the  leopard's  spots,  pro- 
posed to  make  their  colonies  a  means  of 
propagating  the  faith  among  the  Indians. 
Captain  John  Smith  was  censured  because 
he  had  not  already  wrought  the  conversion 


for  the  dead,  and  to  procure  good  luck  in    of  the  heathen,  in  the  first  two  years  of  storm 


ing 

hunting ;  the  austerities  recommended  by  the 
Church  were  therefore  readily  received,  and 
the  stern  savage  nature  felt  their  fascination. 
At  the  Canadian  Mission  of  St.  Xavier,  Indian 
neophytes  used  flagellations  unto  blood,  and 
belts  lined  with  points  of  iron.  The  amiable 
Mohawk  fanatic,  Catherine  Tehgahkouita, 
who  is  called  the  Iroquois  saint,  and  at  whose 
tomb  French  as  well  as  Indian  devotees 
were  healed  of  divers  sicknesses,  carried  her 
austerities  to  such  an  extreme  as  to  purchase 
sanctity  with  her  life. 

When  the  Mohawks  captured  some 
of  the  converts  whose  religion  had 
brought  them  into  alliance  with  Can- 
ada, the  new  Catholics  had  an  oppor- 
tunity to  display  that  fortitude  which 
is  in  the  very  fiber  of  the  Indian,  by 
suffering  the  torments  skillfully  in- 
flicted by  their  own  tribesmen.  These 
martyrdoms  inflamed  the  zeal  of  the 
neophytes,  and  increased  the  luster 
of  the  new  faith  in  the  eyes  of  the 
savages. 

The  Jesuit  fathers  had  frequent 
cause  to  complain  of  the  stumbling- 
block  which  the  lax  moral  code  of  the 
Indians  jnit  in  their  way.  The  devout 
Father  Jogues  recoiled  with  horror 
from  what  he  could  not  help  seeing 
while  a  captive  in  the  tents  of  the  Mo- 
hawks, fearing  that  his  own  soul  might 
suffer  contamination.  The  teaching 
of  the  Church  that  a  man  should  have 
but  one  wife,  and  that  marriage  was 


and  stress,  while  all  his  endeavors  were 
directed  to  cajoling  or  frightening  the  savages 
into  giving  him  corn  enough  to  keep  his 
cadaverous  company  alive.  The  conversion 
of  the  "  Princess  "  Pocahontas  was  believed 
to  be  the  coming-in  of  the  first-fruits  of  the 
tribes;  but  the  young  Indians  sent  to  Eng- 
land only  learned  the  vices  of  Englishmen. 
One  of  the  first  clergymen  in  Virginia,  Jonas 
Stockam,  losing  patience,  proposed  that  the 
throats  of  their  "  priests  and  ancients  "  should 


io8 


THE  ABORIGINES  AND    THE   COIONISTS. 


be  cut,  as  a  necessary  preliminary  to  the 
conversion  of  the  aborigines;  and  even  the 
geographer  Hakluyt  said  that  "if  gentle  deal- 
ing will  not  serve,"  there  were  "  hammerers 
and  rough  masons  enough,— I  mean  our  old 


minating  the  Indians  took  the  place  of  the 
desire  for  their  conversion.  Toward  the  close 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  in  the  early 
years  of  the  eighteenth,  the  experiment  of 
giving  a  liberal  training  to  Indian  youth  was 


soldiers  trained  up  in  the  Netherlands, — to  tried  for  many  years  in  the  College  of  Wil- 

square   and  prepare   them   to  our  preachers'  Ham   and  Mary,  in  which  a  professorship  for 

hands."    Force   being   a   favorite    means  of  their  benefit  was  founded  by  a  legacy  of  the 

grace  for  Papists  and  Puritans  at  that  time,  famous  Robert  Boyle,  and  Governor  Spots- 


J^-  ■' 


A    DANCE    OF    THE    CAROLINA    INDIANS.      (FROM    JOHN    WHITE  S    ORIGINAL,    IN    THE    GRENVILLE    COLLECTION  OF 

THE    BRITISH    MUSEUM.) 


it  was  naturally  thought  a  wholesome  thing 
for  heathen  savages.  One  of  the  earliest 
projectors  of  the  Virginia  colony  spoke  more 
softly,  and  urged  that  the  Spanish  example 
should  not  be  imitated,  but  that  the  savages 
should  be  converted  "  by  faire  and  loving 
means  suiting  to  our  English  natures,  like 
that  soft  and  gentle  voice  wherein  the  Lord 
appeared  to  Elias."  Collections  were  made 
in  the  churches  in  England  to  found  a  col- 
lege at  Henrico  for  the  purpose  of  "  educat- 
ing infidel  children  in  the  true  knowledge 
of  God."  Ten  thousand  acres  of  land  were 
set  apart  for  this  school,  and  an  amiable 
and  enthusiastic  gentleman  —  Mr.  Thorpe  — 
took  charge  of  its  affairs.  But  upon  the  be- 
ginning of  Indian  horrors  in  1622,  Thorpe 
himself  was  killed,  the  colony  was  driven  to 
the  verge  of  ruin,  and  the  passion  for  exter- 


wood  established  at  his  own  expense  an  In- 
dian school  among  the  Saponies,  where,  about 
1720,  as  many  as  seventy-seven  children  were 
under  the  teaching  of  the  excellent  Charles 
Griffin.  But  the  Indian  students  at  William 
and  Mary  died  from  uncongenial  surround- 
ings, or  relapsed  into  savagery,  and  Spots- 
wood's  school  had  no  other  result  than  that 
of  making  the  Saponies  a  little  more  cleanly 
than  other  Indians. 

Missionary  efforts  were  also  made  by  the 
English  Jesuits,  who  came  over  with  Governor 
Calvert,  at  the  planting  of  Maryland,  in  1634. 
Here,  first,  perhaps,  in  an  English  colony, 
translations  were  made  into  an  Indian  dialect 
for  purposes  of  conversion.  Nothing  could 
be  more  romantic  than  the  wilderness  voyages 
on  the  waters  of  the  Potomac  and  its  tribu- 
taries, such  as  were  frequently  made  in  a  little 


THE  ABORIGINES  AND    THE    COLONISTS. 


109 


ROBERT    BOYLE.       (AFTER    A    PRINT    FROM     A    PAINTING     IN     POSSESSION    OF    LORD    DOVER.) 


boat  by  one  or  another  of  these  fathers, 
accompanied  by  an  interpreter  and  a  ser- 
vant. A  chest  containing  bread  and  butter, 
a  httle  green-dried  maize,  some  beans,  and  a 
Httle  flour,  was  the  store  of  supphes  in  case 
night  should  overtake  them  far  from  the  hos- 
pitaUty  of  wigwam  or  cabin.  In  another  chest 
were  a  bottle  of  wine  for  the  Eucharist,  and  six 
bottles  of  holy  water  for  baptisms.  There 
was  a  casket  containing  sacred  utensils,  and 
a  small  table  for  an  altar.  Another  casket 
was  filled  with  little  bells,  combs,  fish-hooks, 
needles,  thread,  and  other  such  things  "  to 
concihate  the  affection "  of  the  Indians. 
One  can  imagine  the  impression  made  upon 
the  savage  mind  by  the  unpacking  of  these 
bottles  of  consecrated  wine  and  holy  water, 
and  the  setting  out  of  the  little  table  and  the 
mysterious  sacred  utensils.  When  at  length 
Father  White  cured  some  dangerous  wounds 
by  the  application  of  the  cross  to  them,  there 


could  be  no  longer  a  doubt  of  the  superior  effi- 
cacy of  the  new  religion.  Similar  cures  through 
religious  agencies  were  starting-points  with 
some  of  the  New  England  missions.  But  in 
the  course  of  years  Indian  wars,  and  the  con- 
sequent removal  and  destruction  of  the  Mary- 
land tribes,  obhterated  every  vestige  of  the 
work  of  these  Jesuit  missionaries. 

Two  curious  devices  for  taming  the  Indians 
by  degrees  were  tried  in  Maryland  and  Vir- 
ginia. In  165 1,  Lord  Baltimore  proposed  to 
settle  six  bands  on  a  tract  of  land  with  copy- 
hold estate,  and  the  machinery  of  a  feudal 
manor.  In  1655,  Virginia  tried  the  plan  of 
giving  them  a  cow  for  every  eight  wolves' 
heads,  but  the  Indians  neglected  to  milk  the 
cows  hi  summer  and  allowed  them  to  starve 
in  winter.  Nearly  a  hundred  years  later 
the  Abbe  Picquet  tried  to  establish  pastoral 
habits  in  the  Indians  at  Ogdensburg. 

Soon  after  Father  White  had  translated  a 


THE   ABORIGINES  AND    THE    COLONISTS. 


catechism  into  the  speech  of  the  Piscataways 
on  the  Potomac,  John  Campanius,  a  Lutheran 
minister,  in  New  Sweden,  rendered  the  Luth- 
eran catechism  into  the  cognate  dialect  of  the 
Lenni  Lennape,  the  Indians  of  the  Delaware. 
It  was  not  only  translated,  but  adapted  to  the 
savage  understanding :  "  Give  us  this  day  a 
plentiful  supply  of  corn  and  venison,"  was 
one  of  the  petitions  in  the  Lord's  Prayer,  as 
rendered  by  Campanius ;  to  this  the  heart  of  a 
savage  would  be  sure  to  respond.  The  French 
Jesuits  took  similar  liberties  when  they  repre- 
sented, in  the  Iroquois,  that  the  soil  of  heaven 
yields  corn,  beans,  and  pumpkins,  without 
the  trouble  of  tillage.  The  return  of  Cam- 
panius to  Europe,  and  the  overthrow  of 
New  Sweden  by  the  Dutch,  put  an  end  to 
this  mission.  But  half  a  century  after  Cam- 
panius   we    find    the   catechism    printed    for 


the  first  time,  and  put  in  use 
for  the  instruction  of  the  In- 
dians. 

About  the  time  that  Campanius 
began  to  learn  the  language  of 
the  Delawares,a  similar  impulse 
moved  Megapolensis,  a  Dutch 
clergyman  at  Albany,  to  attack 
the  "  heavy  language  "  of  the 
Mohawks.  At  a  later  period 
other  Dutch  ministers  made 
similar  endeavors.  Nowhere 
are  the  vanities  and  vices  of 
the  savage  set  down  more  viva- 
ciously than  in  a  racy  letter 
of  "  Dominie "  Megapolensis. 
The  children,  he  tells  us,  went 
"  mother -naked  "  until  they 
were  ten,  twelve,  or  fourteen 
years  of  age,  and  the  adults 
were  almost  naked  in  sum- 
mer. They  wore  shoes  of  buck- 
skin or  corn-husks,  and  had  a 
streak  of  short  hair  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  head,  "  like  hog's 
bristles."  AVhen  one  of  them  had 
bought  half  an  ell  of  duffel  cloth, 
he  hung  it  loosely  about  him, 
"  without  sewing,  just  as  torn  off, 
and,  as  they  go  away,  they  look 
very  much  at  themselves,  and 
think  they  are  very  fine."  The 
energy  of  the  French  Catho- 
lic and  of  the  New  England 
Puritan  missionaries  was  for- 
eign to  the  temper  of  the  Dutch 
Calvinists  ;  but  the  churches  of 
Albany  succeeded,  from  time 
to  time,  in  bringing  a  number 
of  the  Indians  to  Christianity. 
The  Dutch  dominies  found  it  a 
discouraging  work,  however,  as 
well  among  the  Indians  on  the  sea-coast  as 
among  the  Mohawks  about  Albany.  In  1657 
Megapolensis,  then  at  New  Amsterdam,  and 
his  colleague,  wrote  to  Holland  that  the 
Indian  whom  they  had  had  under  instruc- 
tion to  teach  his  people,  and  who  had 
learned  to  read  and  write  good  Dutch  and 
had  made  a  public  profession  of  faith,  had 
of  late  taken  to  drinking  brandy,  had  pawned 
his  Bible,  and  had  "  become  a  real  beast." 
This  was  the  end  of  similar  beginnings  in 
many  places. 

It  was,  however,  in  the  colonies  of  Massa- 
chusetts and  Plymouth,  and  on  the  island  of 
Martha's  Vineyard,  that  the  most  persistent 
and  successful  attempts  were  made  in  colo- 
nial times  to  assimilate  the  Indian's  modes 
of  living  and  thinking  to  that  of  the  white 
man.    There    was    a    force    and    tenacity    in 


IN     1585. 


THE   ABORIGINES  AND    THE    COLONISTS. 


Puritanism  that  rivaled  in  effective- 
ness the  enthusiasm  and  disciphne 
of  the  Jesuits,  and  when  once  the 
energies  of  the  New  England  divines 
were  tlirected  to  the  Christianizing 
and  civilizing  of  pagans,  some  result 
was  sure  to  follow.  Though  the  work 
was  attempted  by  Roger  Williams  in 
Rhode  Island  and  was  begun  success- 
fully bv  the  Mayhews,  father  and  son, 
on  Martha's  Vineyard,  it  found  its 
chief  agent  in  John  Eliot,  the  famous 
"aposde  to  the  Indians,"  whose  cour- 
age, sagacity,  and  self-denial  are  the 
highest  glory  of  early  New  England 
Puritanism.  The  lapse  of  time,  which 
dims  the  fame  of  the  eloquence  of 
Cotton  and  Hooker,  and  the  advance 
of  thought,  which  makes  the  debates 
of  the  great  synod  of  Cambridge  puerile  non- 
sense and  the  learning  of  Norton  and  the 
Mathers  of  little  account,  only  increase  the 
luster  of  the  Roxbury  preacher.  His  patient 
devotion  made  the  wilderness  of  barbarism  to 
blossom  with  Indian  villages  governed  by 
law  and  striving  after  regular  morality,  while 
his  example  infused  a  more  humane  spirit 
into  the  rigorous  Puritanism  of  his  time.  He 
remembered  that  such  work  must  be  slow, 
and  chose  for  his  motto  :  Ab  extreino  ad  ex- 
treniiun  nisi  per  media.  He  had  the  supreme 
condescension  of  strong  goodness  to  the  in- 
firmities begotten  of  savagery  and  vice.  He 
entertained  no  false  notions  of  savage  char- 
acter, but  felt  the  hideousness  of  human  bar- 
barism ;  he  even  calls  the  Indians  "  the  dregs 
of  mankind."  He  stooped  to  win  their  affec- 
tions by  means  suited  to  their  childishness : 
at  the  close  of  his  first  public  interview  he 
gave  apples  to  the  children  and  tobacco  to 
the  men.  When  they  wept,  he  shed  tears ;  his 
heart  was  like  a  mother's  to  them.  The  first 
prayer  he  was  able  to  utter  in  their  tongue 
touched  their  stolid  natures  profoundly.  They 
would  sometimes  lie  awake  all  night  from  the 
excitement  caused  by  his  sympathetic  dis- 
courses.   It  is  impossible,  even  now,  to  read 


*:'■    ^ 

■f 

m 

r 

^^m2j: 

«ieir  7nea/e  . 

i'W 

^Hf ' 

ofearhf.. 

i^ 

i^V'' 

i^m 

^^^ 

^ 

1^ 

FROM     THE     ORK.IN. 


1585. 


without  emotion  his  narrative  of  the  awaken- 
ing of  conscience  in  some  of  the  Indians,  of 
the  confession  of  faults,  and  the  tearful  rec- 
onciliation of  domestic  quarrels. 

Their  minds,  not  inured  to  the  hardy  specu- 
lations of  theology,  received  Eliot's  system 
with  difficulty.  They  asked  him  what  would 
become  of  the  soul  of  a  man  if  he  were  cased 
in  iron  a  foot  thick,  and  cast  into  the  fire. 
They  wished  to  know  why  God  did  not  kill 
the  devil,  and  have  done  with  him.  But  he 
chiefly  won  them  by  his  appeals  to  a  common- 
place sense  of  right  and  wrong,  and  to  their 
domestic  feelings.  He  persuaded  the  tyran- 
nical husband  to  make  public  and  contrite 
confession  of  wife-beating,  and  he  reconciled 
the  unruly  son  and  unkind  father  by  bring- 
ing them  to  mutual  confessions  and  forgive- 
ness in  the  presence  of  their  neighbors. 
By  seeking  the  Indians  at  their  great  fish- 
ing resorts,  by  accepting  the  rude  condi- 
tions of  their  life,  by  hardihood  under  expos- 
ure, and  by  coolness  in  peril,  he  won  their 
esteem. 

Eliot  had  need  of  his  motto,  for  his  con- 
verts began  their  new  life  at  a  very  low 
point,  as  the  early  laws  which  they  instituted 
for  their  own  reformation  bear  witness.    They 


WAMPUM    BELT,    PRESENTED 


INDIANS    TO    WILLIAM     FENN.       (BV    PERMISSION    OF    THE    LIBRARY    COMPANY 
OF    PHILADELPHIA.) 


THE  ABORIGINES  AND    THE    COLONISTS. 


JOHN    ELIOT        (by    PERMISSION,     FROM    A    PORTRAIT    IN    POSSESSION    OF    THE    FAMILY    OF    THE    LATE    WILLIAM    WHITING,    ESQ.) 


imposed  penalties  on  idleness,  lewdness,  long 
hair  in  men  and  short  hair  in  women,  spong- 
ing on  one's  neighbors,  scantiness  of  apparel 
in  women.  Later  there  were  rules  against 
powwowing,  lying,  stealing,  polygamy,  quar- 
reling, pride,  Sabbath-breaking,  greasing  one's 
self,  and  certain  other  offenses  that  are  better 
left  unnamed.  These  are  the  blue  laws  of  the 
aborigines.  By  degrees  many  of  the  Indians 
were  reduced  to  some  order,  though  they 
never  became  industrious,  and  were  liable  to 
many  lapses  into  savagery.  General  (iookin, 
the  agent  of  the  Massachusetts  General  Court, 
was  Eliot's  principal  assistant  in  the  civil  part 
of  his  work.  There  was  much  opposition  from 
the  medicine-men,  and  a  more  dangerous  an- 
tagonism was  stirred  up  by  the  jealousy  of  the 
chiefs.  Mockery  was  added  to  intimidation. 
Two  lads  from  the  Christian  village  were 
jeeringly    nicknamed    respectively   Jehovah 


and  Jesus.  One  of  the  chiefs  on  Martha's 
Vineyard,  for  "  walking  with  the  English," 
was  wounded  by  an  assassin  sent  from  the 
mainland.  One  cannot  but  regret  the  waste 
of  time  and  effort  in  Eliot's  translation  of  the 
whole  Bible  into  a  dialect  spoken  by  a  few 
thousand  people,  and  destined  to  pass  swiftly 
out  of  use.  He  also  spent  breath  in  giving 
lectures  to  Indian  teachers  on  "logic  and 
theology,"  after  the  manner  of  the  times,  and 
in  1672  printed  a  thousand  "logic  primers" 
in  their  language.  Money  was  freely  given 
in  England  by  Robert  Boyle  and  others; 
much  of  it  was  expended  in  New  England 
in  trying  to  educate  Indians  in  Harvard  Col- 
lege, for  the  ministry.  Aside  from  the  inherent 
folly  of  giving  classical  or  scholastic  instruc- 
tion to  an  Indian  preacher,  the  Indian  youth 
were  not  fitted  by  nature  to  receive  a  liberal 
education,  and  the  change  in  their  hereditary 


THE  ABORIGINES  AND    THE   COLONISTS. 


113 


habits  aggravated  their  natural  tendency  to 
puhnonary  disease,  so  that  this  part  of  the 
experiment  was  an  entire  faihire  —  the  only 
Indian  graduate  died  at  twenty  years  of  age, 
and,  failing  students,  the  "  Indian  College  " 
building  was  turned  into  a  printing-office. 
But  the  most  trying  part  of  Ehot's  experi- 
ence must  have  come  from  the  instability  of 
many  of  his  converts.  Some  of  the  most 
prominent  relapsed  into  barbarism  and  vice, 
and  some  engaged  in  Philip's  massacres. 
Among  these  was  the  Indian  printer  who  had 
helped  Eliot  in  issuing  the  Bible.  Yet  those 
of  his  converts  who  took  part  with  Philip  in 
the  massacres  scrupled  much  as  to  whether 
they  might  eat  horse-flesh  in  case  of  necessity. 

We  must  not,  however,  estimate  at  too  low  a 
rate  the  results  of  the  labors  of  the  apostle  and 
those  associated  with  him.  Just  before  the  out- 
break of  Philip's  massacres,  when  the  mission- 
ary work  was  at  its  best,  there  were  about 
four  thousand  in  the  villages  of  the  "  praying 
Indians,"  on  Martha's  Vineyard,  Cape  Cod, 
and  about  Boston,  chiefly  among  sedentary 
fishing  tribes,  and  those  living  intermingled 
with  the  settlers.  Missionary  labor  was  never 
very  successful  in  a  dominant  tribe. 

In  the  hurricane  of  popular  resentment 
which  broke  forth  after  the  outbreak  of  the 
massacre  under  Philip,  Eliot  and  Gookin 
had  need  of  all  their  courage  and  address  to 
preserve  the  faithful  praying  Indians  from  the 
wrath  of  the  white  man.  The  apostle's  former 
popularity  in  these  times  turned  into  some- 
thing like  odium,  but  his  courage  and 
devotion  increased  with  the  distress  of  his 
people,  who  were  shut  up  on  one  of  the 
islands  in  Boston  harbor  for  safety  until  they 
were  at  last  permitted  to  fight  against  Philip. 
After  the  tempest  subsided,  it  came  to  pass, 
by  the  labor  of  those  who  succeeded  Eliot, 
that  all  of  the  New  England  Indians  who 
survived  the  wars,  the  diseases,  and  the  vices 
introduced  by  Europeans,  were  brought,  to  a 
greater  or  less  extent,  under  the  influence  of 
Christianity  and  law.  But  a  regular  life  has 
always  proved  not  only  irksome,  but  unwhole- 
some, to  the  Indian.  Caucasians  have  been 
acclimated  to  civilization  only  by  the  slow 
advance  of  centuries.  A  rapid  reduction  to  a 
civilized  state-  is  a  passage  from  extreme  to 
extreme,  without  the  intervening  mean.  The 
moral  and  economic  improvement  wrought 
in  the  condition  of  the  Indians  in  New  Eng- 
land and  on  Long  Island  has  produced  a 
gradual  and  almost  total  extinction  of  the 
red  race ;  the  white  man's  virtues  are  nearly 
as  fatal  to  the  Indian  as  his  vices. 

It  is  not  my  purpose  to  trace  here  the 
history  of  Indian  missions,  except  in  so  far  as 
it  illuminates  some  traits  of  colonial  life,  and 
Vol.  XXVL— 12. 


the  character  and  fate  of  the  aboriginal  race. 
The  politico-religious  mission  of  the  English 
Church  among  the  IrO(|uois  belongs  to  the 
history  of  the  conflict  between  the  English 
and  French  colonies.  The  later  and  partly 
successful  missions  of  the  Congregationalists 
and  Scotch  Presbyterians  were  the  overflow 
of  the  great  Whitefieldian  revival,  and  their 
history  belongs  to  the  account  of  that  move- 
ment. The  discouragement  attending  all  these 
eflbrts  is  well  expressed  in  the  confession  of 
the  veteran  missionary,  John  Brainerd,  at  the 
close  of  the  colonial  epoch  :  "  There  is  too 
much  truth  in  the  common  saying,  '  Indians 
will  be  Indians.'  " 

But  it  would  be  a  mistake  not  to  mention 
here  the  quaintly  picturesque  mission  of  the 
Moravian  brotherhood,  which  began  in  1739, 
at  Shokomeko,  on  the  borders  of  New  York 
and  Connecticut,  and  spread  to  many  tribes,  so 
that  the  voices  of  the  Geniian  brethren  were 
heard  in  the  valley  of  the  Ohio  long  before 
the  Revolution.  Never  was  there  a  more 
single-hearted  religious  enthusiasm  than  that 
of  the  Moravian  missionaries,  dwelling  often 
in  wigwams  remote  from  human  fellowship, 
and  in  frequent  perils,  winning  the  savages  by 
incredible  affection,  and  recalling  them  from 
their  disheartening  lapses  into  barbarism  by 
a  long-suffering  patience  that  knew  no  exhaus- 
tion. The  communal  organization  of  the 
Moravians  gave  them  an  isolation  from 
worldly  interest,  and  a  discipline  as  effective 
as  that  of  the  Jesuits,  while  the  gentle  sim- 
plicity of  their  manners  and  the  intensity  of 
their  religious  faith  fitted  them  for  a  work  of 
reformation  among  savages.  They  did  not 
escape  the  fatality  attending  all  Indian  mis- 
sions. Though  they  held  a  peaceful  position 
aloof  from  the  conflicts  between  France  and 
England,  Royahsts  and  Continentals,  which 
agitated  even  the  wilderness,  yet  they  were 
often  ground  between  the  millstones.  The 
ignorant  settlers  about  their  first  mission 
accounted  them  French  Jesuits  in  disguise, 
and  the  meek  brethren  endured  the  most 
shameful  persecutions  from  the  authorities  in 
New  York,  who  were  unwilling  that  a  drunken 
Indian  should  be  brought  to  decency  without 
the  Governor's  license.  They  suffered  much 
from  hostile  Indians,  and  more  from  barba- 
rous frontiermen ;  nearly  a  hundred  of  their 
converts — men,  women,  and  children — were 
massacred  by  white  men  at  Gnadenhutten  in 
1782. 

There  is  one  indirect  and  unexpected  result 
of  religious  propagandism  among  the  natives. 
The  old  religion  in  some  of  the  pagan  tribes 
has  suffered  a  change.  The  Great  Spirit,  chief 
of  all  the  gods  and  demons, — hardly,  if  at  all, 
known  to  their  thought   before, — has  come 


H 


THE  ABORIGINES  AND    THE    COIONISTS. 


into  prominence.  Their  festivals  and  super- 
stitious observances  are  now  marked  by 
something  more  entitled  to  be  called  worship 
than  were  their  old  incantations.  The  relig- 
ious ideas  disseminated  among  them  in  the 
later  colonial  time  affected  the  teachings  of 
the  Indian  prophets,  who  arose  after  the 
Revolution  in  great  numbers.  Such  was  the 
great  Ganeodiyo,  the  Iroquois  reformer, 
brother  of  the  famous  chief,  Cornplanter. 
After  a  life  of  dissipation,  Ganeodiyo  fell  into 
a  trance  and  saw  visions  sent  by  the  Great 
Spirit.  He  devoted  the  last  sixteen  years  of 
his  life  to  reforming  the  ancient  religion  and 
setting  to  rights  the  morals  of  his  fellow- 
tribesmen.  All  of  the  unchristianized  Iroquois 
received  his  message,  and  after  his  time  the 
decrease  of  their  numbers  through  intemper- 
ance ceased.  One  curious  effect  of  his  religious 
teaching  has  been  a  sort  of  apotheosis  of 
Washington;  for  though  no  white  man  can 
ever  enter  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  yet  George 
Washington,  the  magnanimous  friend  of  the 
Six  Nations,  abides  in  luxury,  solitude  and 
silence,  in  a  house  fast  by  the  very  door  of 
Paradise,  where  every  good  Indian,  on  his 
way  to  bhss,  is  permitted  to  look  in  and  see 
him.  Similar  though  less  dominant  prophets 
arose  among  the  Delawares,  one  of  whom 
supported  Pontiac's  hostihties ;  and  of  the 
same  kind  was  the  Shawnee  prophet,  Tensk- 
watawa,  the  brother  of  Tecumseh,  who 
strongly  influenced  the  Indians  of  Ohio  and 
Indiana,  in  the  beginning  of  this  century,  and 
such  perhaps  were  the  prophets  among  the 
Creeks.  These  reformers  adopted  the  old 
superstitions,  customs,  and  festivals,  but  seem 
to  have  given  them  a  somewhat  deeper  sig- 
nificance. To  the  amorphous  superstitions  of 
the  savages  they  added  certain  notions  that 
were,  no  doubt,  received  from  the  mission- 
aries, such  as  that  of  a  supreme  deity,  and 
that  of  reward  and  penalty  in  a  future  life. 
All,  or  nearly  all  of  them,  made  abstinence 
from  strong  drink  a  prominent  article  in 
their  moral  code,  and  denounced  witches 
and  sorcery ;  and  all  of  them  set  their  faces 
against  the  influence  of  the  white  man,  of 
which  they  were  themselves  the  unconscious 
offspring. 

Speculation  on  the  possibilities  of  develop- 
ment in  the  Indian  race  must  always  be 
rather  void  of  result.  In  Mexico  and  Peru 
two  of  its  branches  had  attained  a  consider- 
able civilization,  a  ponderous  architecture, 
a  grotesque  and  colossal  sculpture,  and  a 
hieroglyphic  system  of  writing.  Within  the 
bounds  of  the  thirteen  colonies,  the  Creeks 
or  Muscogees  had  come  to  plant  extensively, 
to  build  log-houses  with  a  roof  of  thatch,  to 
do  some  rude  wood-carving,  to  sculpture  elab- 


orate tobacco-pipes  of  stone,  and  to  weave 
with  a  rude  threddle.  The  Hurons,  before  the 
earliest  period  of  European  settlement,  car- 
ried on  an  intermediary  commerce  with  other 
tribes;  the  Tuscaroras  made  maple  bowls  and 
ladles  for  sale  to  other  Indians.  The  power- 
ful Muscogee  Confederacy  at  the  South,  and 
that  of  the  Iroquois  Five  Nations  at  the 
North,  were  triumphs  of  savage  statecraft,  and 
had  apparently  set  out  on  that  tedious  and 
bloody  path  to  civilization  trodden  for  ages 
by  the  European  races.  The  superiority  of 
the  Iroquois  to  the  Algonkin  tribes  has  been 
exaggerated;  but  the  former  certainly  had 
more  convenient  houses,  a  larger  dependence 
on  agriculture,  superior  craft  and  enterprise  in 
attack,  a  better  foresight  and  skill  in  fortifica- 
tion, and  were  able  to  transmit  from  one 
generation  to  another  a  stronger  national 
cohesion  than  that  of  the  tribes  about  them. 
They  had  emerged  from  the  state  in  which 
petty  clans  are  mutually  repellant,  like  the 
molecules  of  gases;  a  very  slow  process  of 
condensation  was  probably  going  on,  and  the 
far-reaching  conquests  and  fierce  extennina- 
tion  of  foes  by  the  Five  Nations  tend  to  show 
that  the  awful  law  of  selection  by  survival  of 
the  strongest,  the  most  compacdy  organized, 
and  the  most  ingenious  and  energetic,  was  at 
work  in  the  tribal  warfare  of  America.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  remains  of  ancient  art 
found  in  the  mounds  of  the  Mississippi  Valley, 
and  the  massive  earth-works  of  the  same 
region,  indicate  that  the  Indians  in  that 
valley  in  antiquity  were  as  far  advanced  in 
the  arts  as  the  more  recent  tribes,  and  that 
they  were  as  compactly  and  extensively  or- 
ganized, and  were  possibly  more  agricultural 
than  any  of  the  modern  tribes  north  of 
Mexico.  Development  in  art  and  organi- 
zation would  seem  to  be  always  a  result 
of  the  necessities  growing  out  of  an  in- 
creasing density  of  population,  but  the  pop- 
ulation of  the  tribes  in  the  colonies  was 
apparently  stationary.  Incessant  war,  fre- 
quent want,  occasional  pestilence,  and  the 
destruction  of  unborn  offspring  caused  the 
increase,  if  there  was  any,  to  be  very  small. 
Whether  in  some  far  distant  future  a  civiliza- 
tion might  have  been  evolved  comparable  to 
that  achieved  on  the  Eastern  continent,  can- 
not now  be  conjectured ;  the  arrival  of  Euro- 
peans put  an  end  to  the  experiment.  There 
is  abundant  compensation  for  the  temporary 
evils  that  followed  the  contact  of  the  two 
races,  in  that  eons  of  massacre  and  torture 
horrible  to  contemplate  have  been  spared  by 
the  introduction  of  a  civilization  already 
somewhat  advanced  and  necessarily  dominant 
over  and  exclusive  of  the  primitive  bar- 
barism. 


©niberfiiitpof  J?ortfj  Carolina 


Collection  of  Mattf)  Caroliniana 


C.3 


UNIVERSITY  OF  N.C   AT  CHAPEL  HILL 


00030754390 


FOR  USK  ONLY  IN 
THH  NORTH  CAROLINA  COLLECTION 


